Here's where Trump should put Mitt Romney

The Hill just ran a long article headlined "Trump team ducks and weaves on Romney-Giuliani feud." In broad terms, the article reflects the choice the left sees the Trump transition team facing: select Giuliani for State and reward loyalty, or select Romney to unite the party and reward excellence.

In reality, this is a simpleminded false dichotomy. The real challenge facing the transition team isn't whom to pick for one job, but how to match talents and ambitions to roles in ways that let each of many great candidates contribute to the best of his abilities.

In this context, Mr. Romney's Bain-derived skills as an organizational surgeon (aka mergers, acquisitions, and re-organizations specialist) are what matters. He's the perfect candidate to head a special presidential commission to work with Congress on the Obamacare shutdown, the Medicaid revision, and the VA privatization effort.

It is said of internal auditors that it is their job to shoot the wounded. This, while not generally true of auditors, is generally true of capital management and business brokerage firms – they're the wolves keeping the capitalist herds in good health by weeding out the weak.

(Note that there's a probable personal bias here: in mid-1995, I interviewed for a role at Bain & Company but antagonized the panel by insisting that large corporate or government I.T. outsourcing never makes financial sense unless it's the only means of firing an entire I.T. department prior to rebuilding it – and have not forgiven them for being so wrong.)

Bain is what U.S. health care needs. The VA has turned into Canadian health care; Obamacare abuses have forced disproportionate growth in Medicaid cost, paperwork, and federal control; and even those who think Obamacare has worked out for them have been turned into losers by it. Threading the political needle to unscramble the mess is exactly the job Romney has spent his life preparing for.

And Rudy? My guess is that he can be anything he wants to – and if that's secretary of state, then more power to him.

The Hill just ran a long article headlined "Trump team ducks and weaves on Romney-Giuliani feud." In broad terms, the article reflects the choice the left sees the Trump transition team facing: select Giuliani for State and reward loyalty, or select Romney to unite the party and reward excellence.

In reality, this is a simpleminded false dichotomy. The real challenge facing the transition team isn't whom to pick for one job, but how to match talents and ambitions to roles in ways that let each of many great candidates contribute to the best of his abilities.

In this context, Mr. Romney's Bain-derived skills as an organizational surgeon (aka mergers, acquisitions, and re-organizations specialist) are what matters. He's the perfect candidate to head a special presidential commission to work with Congress on the Obamacare shutdown, the Medicaid revision, and the VA privatization effort.

It is said of internal auditors that it is their job to shoot the wounded. This, while not generally true of auditors, is generally true of capital management and business brokerage firms – they're the wolves keeping the capitalist herds in good health by weeding out the weak.

(Note that there's a probable personal bias here: in mid-1995, I interviewed for a role at Bain & Company but antagonized the panel by insisting that large corporate or government I.T. outsourcing never makes financial sense unless it's the only means of firing an entire I.T. department prior to rebuilding it – and have not forgiven them for being so wrong.)

Bain is what U.S. health care needs. The VA has turned into Canadian health care; Obamacare abuses have forced disproportionate growth in Medicaid cost, paperwork, and federal control; and even those who think Obamacare has worked out for them have been turned into losers by it. Threading the political needle to unscramble the mess is exactly the job Romney has spent his life preparing for.

And Rudy? My guess is that he can be anything he wants to – and if that's secretary of state, then more power to him.